WASHINGTON — The U.S. Justice Department pressed forward with its antitrust case in opposition to Google Wednesday, questioning a former worker of the search engine large about offers he helped negotiate with cellphone corporations within the 2000s.

Chris Barton, who labored for Google from 2004 to 2011, testified that he made it a precedence to barter for Google to be the default search engine on cellular units. In change, cellphone service suppliers or producers had been provided a share of income generated when customers clicked on advertisements.

In the largest antitrust case in 1 / 4 century, the federal government is arguing that Google has rigged the market in its favor by locking in its search engine because the one customers see first on their units, shutting out competitors and smothering innovation.

Google counters that it dominates the web search market as a result of its product is best than the competitors. Even when it holds the default spot on smartphones and different units, it argues, customers can swap to rival serps with a few clicks.

And Barton testified that Google wasn’t the one search engine searching for default standing with cellphone corporations.

In a 2011 electronic mail change, Google executives famous that AT&T selected Yahoo and Verizon went with Microsoft’s Bing as its search engine.

“I faced a challenge because mobile carriers became fixed on revenue share percentage,” Barton stated Wednesday. To counter the competitors, he tried to steer potential companions that Google’s high-quality searches would generate extra clicks - and due to this fact extra promoting income - even when the carriers had been paid a nominally decrease proportion.

Google has emerged because the dominant participant in web searches, accounting for about 90% of the market. The Justice Department filed its antitrust lawsuit in opposition to the corporate almost three years in the past throughout the Trump administration, alleging Google has used its web search dominance to achieve an unfair benefit in opposition to rivals.

The trial, which started Tuesday, is predicted to final 10 weeks.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta probably received’t subject a ruling till early subsequent 12 months. If he decides Google broke the regulation, one other trial will resolve what steps ought to be taken to rein within the Mountain View, California-based firm.

Top executives at Google and its company father or mother Alphabet Inc., in addition to these from different highly effective know-how corporations are anticipated to testify. Among them is prone to be Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, who succeeded Google co-founder Larry Page 4 years in the past. Court paperwork additionally counsel that Eddy Cue, a excessive rating Apple government, is perhaps known as to the stand.

On Wednesday, the Justice Department additionally questioned Google chief economist Hal Varian for a second day about the best way the corporate makes use of the huge quantities of knowledge generated by consumer clicks to enhance future searches and entrench its benefit over rivals.

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Michael Liedtke contributed to this story.

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